Tuesday, 1 January 2013

Lou Reed - Edinburgh - 2008

25th June 2008
Edinburgh Playhouse

Well who would have thought it? After all these years of insisting that
Berlin was his masterpiece, and the world not listening, it appears that Lou
Reed was right all along. Or so one
would be lead to believe, given the positive reappraisal Reed’s 1973 album has
enjoyed since he chose to tour the thing round the world.

To recap: released as the follow up to his Glam-rock breakthrough
Transformer, Berlin picked up the story of the star-crossed lovers featured in the
song of the same name which had appeared on Reed’s debut album two years
earlier. On Berlin (the album) we
learned the pair were called Jim and Caroline; both heavily into drugs, with Caroline
also enjoying a penchant for casual sex.

The album chronicled Jim and Caroline’s downwardly spiralling
relationship stopping off at jealousy, physical abuse, separation, children
taken into care and finally Caroline’s suicide.
All pretty grim stuff. At the
time of release the thing received a stiff kicking by the music press, but
commercially (in the UK anyway) it became one of Reed’s biggest sellers.

My own opinion, for what it is worth, is that it is an
essential, if flawed recording. A couple
of the songs on the first side (vinyl days, remember) are mediocre at best. Men of Good Fortune does not really appear to
even belong there, whilst the jaunty Caroline Says I boasts perhaps Reed’s
worst ever rhyme:

"Just like poison in a vial.

She was often very vile."

Side two, however, was something altogether different: a
suite of four depressing and, at times distressing to listen to, songs which
flowed into and complemented each other to create……what? Perhaps the most uncomfortable and painfully honest
20 minutes in rock ‘n’ roll history. All
one’s defences are stripped away as the heart-rending despair of the two
characters is laid bare for our inspection.
I defy any parent not to be affected upon first listening to The Kids.

It is little wonder many journos and fans alike, expecting
another Transformer, turned away from the dark corners Berlin visited. Reed would play bits of the album over the
following decades, but only with this tour, undertaken some thirty-odd years
after the album’s release, would fans have the opportunity to hear the collection in
its entirety.

The puzzle of how Reed was going to fill a whole evening
from just a single album’s worth of music was soon answered, as it became apparent pretty much every track
from side one had been extended with a (usually superfluous) guitar blow-out grafted
on to the outro. Only Oh Jim was
elevated by this treatment.

Thankfully Reed appeared to realise there was no way he
could improve upon the fragile vicious beauty of side two, so he succeeded in keeping
any excesses in check until the Sad Song finale, where the climax drifted
slightly towards histrionic, but I could forgive him that. As indeed, did everyone in the Playhouse, rewarding
Reed and his band a standing ovation.

A few encores finished the evening off: a slightly ropey Satellite of Love (with the children’s
choir just about making up for the singer’s croaking vocal), was followed by a
sprightly Rock ‘n’ Roll. Proceedings ended on optimistic note with a
new song; The Power of The Heart. Which
sounded like Lou's marriage proposal to recent bride
Laurie Anderson. Old Romantic that he
is.